You can tell the deepest truths with the lies of fiction

Category Archives: Stories & fanfics

<Do you remember when I bought that watermelon chap stick without realizing that it was a tinted lip balm, so I applied it totally random on my mouth? And that when we crossed Stamford Bridge it was a very windy day, so you looked at my messy hair and my smeared red mouth and told me:

-You look like that fat dude with lipstick you love. That singer from that band of grave diggers.

You have to thank your irresistible smile and the way you helped me to wear the lip balm off if I didn’t kill you.>

Reading Proust taught us that the taste of something can evoke lost or hidden memories; those can be triggered by a music, a smell or an object, like a stupid lip balm found in the bathroom drawer. So, before memories start tearing me apart, better move to another part of Fullham and start illustrating something nice you can visit in London if you love football as I do.

My best friend is a huge supporter of Chelsea, so I promised him to take many pics of the Stamford Bridge stadium. To get there you have to hop off at Fullham Broadway station and go ahead on Fullham Road. After a few minutes walking, on the left, within the Moore Park Estate also known as “The Brigde”, you will see the home ground of Chelsea FC.

It was opened in 1877 and has been the venue of many football matches and has also hosted a variety of other sporting events including greyhounds races.

The North stand is named after former Chelsea director Matthew Harding, while the West stand is the first thing you see entering by the gate in Fullham Road since it’s the main external face of the stadium.

There’s a Hall of fame and the statue of Peter Osgood sculpted by Philip Jackson and unveiled in 2010 by his widow Lynn in the presence of his friends and colleagues. He was a very important player and scored more than 150 goals. The inscription says:

Ossie King of Stamford Bridge
Stamford Bridge has many heroes but only one king. Graceful technician nerveless striker. Icon of the swinging sixties. Adored by fans, scorer of immortal cup final goals.
A big man for a golden age.

If you want to have an incredible experience you can book the one hour long tour that will take you behind the scenes of the Blues, giving you access to areas normally reserved for players and officials, like the press room, the home and away dressing rooms, the tunnel and the dug-out areas.

The tour include the entry to the Museum (that can be visited also without taking the tour), giving you the chance to see how Chelsea has evolved on and off the pitch over the years and to see memorabilia and get to know the most representative players.

I’ve been thinking a lot about suicide lately and that’s positive because the people who can think about it in a lucid and analytic way, are those who will never commit. I made a couple of attempt when I was younger, for problems that, in the end, had a solution, not like now where I’m struggling against an invisible enemy. I’m without a clear diagnosis and a working cure, alone with a new pain or disease everyday. I’m ready to fight, I’m a tough warrior, but I’d like to know what I’m fighting against.

I try to focus on the positive things left in my life (honestly thinking to those who have a worse situation doesn’t work and it also makes me feel guilty), but sometimes pain and deception wins. So I feel tired to ask myself if tomorrow will be a good or a bad day, to cancel plans, can’t be sure of anything, of being called lazy or that it’s everything in my head. Then the dark cloud approaches and I can’t help thinking that my family will be better without me. I feel useful and a waste of time and even if I struggle not to let my disease to define who I am, there’s no doubt it’s silently deleting my life, my positive thoughts, the goals I want to set.

I read an Italian book “La Casa Blu” about the will to find a more decent way to pass over than let people finding you hung somewhere or crashed downstairs. I found this sentence I related to “today I’m too tired to live and to live, hope tomorrow is a better day”

Hope. There’s still hope, even in the darkest situation and I’m going to use it as a rope to escape this well of pain. So, come on girl, put some music on, wear your invisible superhero cape and kick this day in the ass. Remember to turn the pain into power and that tomorrow is JD’s birthday.

Ps. I wrote a fanfic about love and suicide: its title is “The Reasons Why”, maybe one of my best piece of writing.

I’m really sure that writing music and stories follows the same healing process, that those two arts are complementary and inseparable. I can’t write without music, I can’t listen to a song I love, without imagining a story.

The theme was “Labyrinth” and the first thing that came on my mind was the movie with David Bowie; creating an omage to the White Duke was inevitable.

CHANGESZiggy loved Bowie songs: when he listened to one, he clung to the bars of the cage and moved in time. He was smart, every time I put him in a maze, he didn’t flattened terrified as the others, but he did his best to get out, finding the exit or the bait in a few minutes, so I chose him to face the water maze. I immersed him gently in the milky liquid, from the tail, making him look at the border for no influencing him on the direction to take. In a short time he managed to locate the exit platform that was hidden a few millimeters below the water surface.I ran to communicate the results to Dr. Hog.-Ziggy completed the Morris’ maze in 15 seconds!-Ziggy? Number 9! Have we started giving lab rats names, now?It was then that I realized that science was not for me: I hung the lab coat to a nail and took away Ziggy.You will find us in Leicester Square, just follow the music. We will dance for you for a few coins or just for a smile.

I turn up the volume of the music to not hear the insults and I look down to avoid seeing who’s sending them against me; in class someone throws on my desk a note that says “weirdo”, I curl up in my oversized sweatshirt hoping that at least the teachers will leave me alone.Once home, the apartment responds with silence to an ungiven good morning: it’s dark, it smells of musty, smoke and dirty dishes; my father is sleeping as usual or perhaps he is already in the bar.I lock myself in the room, I dissolve the tablet under the tongue and wait for the light to return to illuminate the rooms. I can feel again the smell of my mother soup and little Mattia’s laughter; dad now smells nicely of cologne and he wears the tie with the horseshoes I gave him for Christmas. I show him the report card and he exclaims proudly:“Brava, Princess!”Then he caresses my face, I smile and I continue to do it until darkness steals even those moments of artificial happiness.

Writing has always saved me, it’s the bubble in which I hide from the world, the way I express what I cannot or don’t want to say, the way I get distracted. This time for the literary contest of 1000 characters, we had to write a story inspired by a painting by Edward Hopper that depicted a staircase and a door. The first thing that came to my mind was the secret hideout of Anne Frank, and for the first time I went out of my comfort zone and I wrote something absolutely foreign to my experience, although Anne was my model when I was a teenager, as Jo March was when I was a child.

I didn’t win by one vote, but the satisfaction of seeing my work on the top of the list, among the three that I liked more, it was gratifying. Enjoy it, in English first, then in Italian.

Prinsengracht 263Miep had not been to Prinsengracht since the soldiers had unhinged the movable bookcase discovering the series of steps leading to the upper floor.She looked at the staircase frightened: it seemed gloomy and hostile, yet it was the same one she had used many times to bring her friends some news, food, once even red shoes for the young Anne who with her“It’s Miep”, was always the first to break the tense silence that created when someone opened the plain wooden door.She began to climb, she trembled, and she had to hold on to the wooden handrail for support. She reached the top, she turned the gold knob and went in: no joyful voice announced it, no one came up to greet her.She picked up a book from the floor and stood in the doorway staring at the messy room, the overturned chairs, the plates shattered as the hopes of Anne who despite living as a recluse, was able to think of the beauty that still remained in the world .

The topicof theliterary contextof thisweek was“Speaking in music” andwhat better wayto explain that than the story of a musician–writer’s encounter? Becauseas I’ve already written, I find extraordinary that love could be immortalized, justby putting it intoa storyora song. The feelingwill eventually end, people will broke upordie, but whatthey had for each otherwill be eternal.UnfortunatelyI’m a notvery good writer, due either tothe limitof a thousandcharacters, or to the fact that, given to so muchreadingand writingfanfiction,Ijust havea lot of theory, but little practice, the story wasn’t notable to conveyeverything I wanted.ButI put ithereanyway.Ititled it“Yellow” as Coldplay’s song, the first one thathas been played for me.

Yellow

“-Do you know that if a musician falls for you, you will live forever?A phrase told as a joke, but it was the key that allowed me to really understand your song. I found in the text of our conversations, the ones that go on until 4 in the morning, the pace is slow as the hugs that we find it hard to dissolve, the melody is as pleasant as those kisses on the cheek approaching dangerously to lips.We’re in your studio: I scribble in my notebook waiting for the right inspiration, you’re playing the guitar; occasionally you take a break to write down something, or to see what I’m doing, but your cheeks inflames and your eyes lower when they meet mine. I smile: I never thought of being your own Michelle; I look at you one last time, then the pen slides on the paper having fun to make you step into the shoes of the protagonist of this story making you immortal as well because, you know, a writer fell in love with you”

I’m desperately trying to earn some money with translations because the first point of my 2016 bucket list is quite ambitious: LA.

I’m still looking on the wrong side when I cross the road, I suffer from perpetual jet lag and I’d love to have a decompression chamber to pass unscathed by the vision of JD & friends in the hot tub to the endless controversy about lice, something that leds me gently from a visit the grand Canyon to the schoolyard.

I try to overcome this through reading and writing. I keep myself busy with short essays for contests on Facebook where the greatest pleasure is given by reading other people’s works and a new fanfiction perfectly outlined in my head, but that is hard to come out as if I were afraid of soiling my memories with words, it’s at times like this that I wish I had the inspiration and the creative abilities of my musician friends!

Probably I’ll never be a Michelle or Rosanna and JD doesn’t run the risk of being remembered as the new Mr.Darcy, but I like the idea that if a writer or musician fall in love with you, you will live forever.